Workout of the Day

Apr 20

Anyone Can Point to a Burning Building

Imagine a world in which, upon being called downtown to an apartment fire that’s growing in size and threatening nearby buildings, the fire crew rolls up and, rather than pulling out the fire hose or checking for people still stuck in the building, they get busy pointing out all of issues they see with the situation. The fire captain points to the fire and suggests that the problem is that someone started a fire in your building, and it’s getting bigger, some members of the crew busy themselves by explaining to you that it looks like someone didn’t remember to use their fire extinguisher, that’s why the fire continued to spread, and the rest of fire crew all offer their warnings against common mistakes that typically lead to fires, reminding you not to have curtains near your stove and to never leave candles unattended. Meanwhile, the building is completely engulfed in flames and turning into a pile of rubble.

This hypothetical picture, of course, is an exercise in the absurd. Firefighters are employed as firefighters because they are problem solvers. They don’t stand by, watching a building burn to the ground while pointing to all of the problems with the situation; they rush in, they take action, they work together to mitigate damage, save lives, and stop the fire.

Anyone can point to a problem. Anyone can gesture a finger at a burning building and say, “well, that’s bad.” The world doesn’t need any more problem-pointers.

What we need is those who see a problem and go to work finding solutions. Leaders, innovators, problem solvers, owners, helpers -- there are all sorts of titles we could assign.

Personally, you would do well to surround yourself with these people, and to aim to be such a person. Globally, we would do well to all strive to be such people.

You don’t have to look far to find a problem (hint: we can all find a few if we look inward). Now let’s get to work solving them.